The next Zorro movie will star Gael García Bernal and be set in the future

The shakier world economies get, the more fertile the ground becomes for post-apocalyptic movies. Soon we'll have the Hunger Games and it seems there's also going to be another I Am Legend… somehow.

But to get to the point, the next and jolliest franchise up for future-ization is Zorro, the perennial tale of a masked rogue, leaping around colonial SoCal with his foil that's already spawned well over a dozen films worldwide since the character's introduction back in 1919. Yes the good people at FOX plan to set the next installment, titled Zorro Reborn, in a post-apocalyptic world. (Fun fact of the day for non-Spanish speakers: "zorro" means "fox" and in Spanish slang the female version, "zorra," means something far less polite.)

I'm not sure how bad these apocalypses really are considering that there's always a "post," but considering the lighthearted jauntiness of the Zorro films this could actually work out. Imagine Zorro slashing a "Z" into some bloated oxygen-baron's Hazmat suit and gaily laughing his head off while he makes his escape on a hover train. Plus, García Bernal is a likeable actor and undoubtedly has the requisite charisma to wear the fabled broad-brimmed hat of our continent's Robin Hood. Whatever your opinion of Che Guevara, Bernal was bright and earnest as young Che in The Motorcycle Diaries and showed he was up for creative gambles in Michel Gondry's whimsical The Science of Sleep.